Looking back and forward

It has been a hot few days.  In the low thirties in the shade.  Too much for me, particularly as we haven't had time to get used to it (the temperature has jumped about 13 degrees in the space of a few days).  Andy has been telling me the stats for how many more days we have had in recent years over thirty degrees compared to the period from the 1960s-1990s.  It is quite a significant increase.  No surprise given our warming climate more generally.

Yesterday we got up early and tried to beat the worst of the heat so we could unfix some of the furniture that we are having moved from the house at Liss to our home here in West Sussex.  We spent an hour or so taking the bed apart, feet off the sofa, and putting books into boxes...and so on.  It feels strange to be dismantling my old home.  It is the house I carefully took from a rather bedraggled uncared for place in 2010 to a lovely home.  Ten years and many life events later, it is time to let someone else enjoy the house - for the time being anyway.  However I am mindful of how the house has been a sanctury for me through some very difficult times.

I spent the rest of the day sorting through books, photos,  diaries and tape recordings of family meal times from my childhood.  I now have a much streamlined collection of photos,  have listened to much singing of nursery rhymes and I have my diaries out to read and my books ready for a rainy day. I find the books particularly hard to rationalise, there are some which just have to stay - it feels like the collection is part of my identity - memories of my childhood, a reflection of my interests and aspirations, and those of my parents and grandparents over the years.